Originally published on SoundCloud (January 15, 2021)

The weather was perfect in Nashville. Mid 70s. Not a cloud in the sky. My four-year-old and I setup a pretend restaurant inside, but soon after he suggested something much better on a day like this: a lemonade stand.

As an alternative to charging people for lemonade in the middle of a pandemic, my wife had the idea of including an optional donation jar instead. She mentioned a few charities and my son chose the local children’s hospital as the beneficiary of the stand. We weren’t expecting anything more than a couple takers, but the response was beautiful. …

Whenever you encounter a feature online intended to deceive or trick the end user, this is known as a dark pattern. It might be a button you can’t avoid, an intentionally hidden feature, a “limited time” discount with no end date. The sky is the limit and unfortunately, these deceptive tactics have been prevalent on the Internet for a long time.

Brad Parscale, the President’s former campaign manager, knows many of them all too well. A master of digital manipulation, he will be the first to admit that he stole the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton with an aggressive…

I’m a chronic procrastinator. When faced with a challenging task, I often put it on the back burner in favor of something easier. On the surface it feels like laziness or a lack of self-control, but in reality it’s a lot more than that. Procrastination is driven by feelings of insecurity and doubt associated with the tasks we turn ourselves away from. The longer we delay completing these tasks, the more our anxiety feeds on itself, allowing our internal critics to make their presence known with disapproval and nagging feelings of inadequacy.

Recently, I’ve been doing anything I can to…

In 2015, Twitter was on the verge of irrelevance. The company recorded its first quarterly dip in monthly active users and Facebook had emerged as the clear winner of social media. The outlook wasn’t pretty.

Then the 2016 election happened.

Surely enough, Twitter began to attract more attention than ever before thanks to the new president of the United States — a notorious celebrity figure who has been using the platform religiously since 2011. Although his tweets are often incendiary, combative and factually inaccurate, the world is fixated on his account. …

Six years ago, Facebook made the acquisition of a lifetime. Then it did something brilliant: nothing.

Facebook left Instagram alone. The app was growing quickly, becoming more relevant each day, eating into rival Snapchat’s audience and threatening Facebook itself — just a few reasons why the tech giant dished out 10 figures for a company with no revenue.

More than anything, Instagram was cool. Teenagers loved it. And Facebook was smart to keep its distance because its eight-year-old platform had started to feel decidedly uncool (especially with younger audiences).

After the acquisition, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger joined…

Forget the stats. Forget Jordan. Forget the next destination.

The legacy of LeBron James isn’t just about basketball. It’s about his values, leadership and commitment to those around him — both on and off the court.

I grew up watching the world’s most talented basketball player from a distance, but over the past few years I’ve become one of his biggest fans. The only thing more admirable than his phenomenal athletic ability is how much he has evolved as a player and person over time.

James’s situation is beyond unique. He has been scrutinized on a national level since high…

Facebook is arguably the most powerful media channel in the world. Millions of businesses depend on it (and its precious data), but the company has betrayed 2.2 billion users and it will take a lot to earn back their trust.

By now you’ve heard about the data leak that resulted in 50 million users having their personal information exploited by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that was later hired by the Trump campaign.

It’s important to note that data breaches are inevitable in tech. Bad actors will occasionally find a way to hack the system and expose private data. …